Abou Leila

Ostensibly, this outing is offered as a quest across Algeria to find and kill a notorious terrorist, Abou Leila. The Algerian countryside and deserts are certainly the locale for most of the story; the central question, however, is whether the story is truly about Abou Leila or ... something else.

It starts with a bang, in fact quite a few as we see two men in the front seat of a car - and with the camera behind them, we cannot actually see their full faces - on a suburban street somewhere, watching a man with a briefcase exit a house further along the road. He unlocks a nearby car and proceeds to get into it; but a woman comes out of the house and, from her door step, begins talking to the man waiting at the car. We cannot hear what is said, and she returns inside and closes the door.

At the same moment, the passenger in the other car gets out and begins walking towards the man now getting into his car, while also starting to pull out a pistol. As he gets nearer, another car enters the street, perhaps a hundred metres away and behind him. The man hears the car and stops, hiding the pistol, to allow it to pass - a police car, in fact.

As the police continue on, the man then rushes up to the car and pumps three bullets into the man now in the driver's seat. The woman opens the house door again, and watches, aghast. As the shots ring out, the police car does a quick u-turn and with siren blaring approaches the shooter, now covering up behind the car door, and stops twenty or thirty metres away. A gun fight begins, some seconds pass, then the shooter starts running back to his car still firing at the police car, and....

Cut to black screen and the words, in blood red: Algeria, 1994.

Then ... jump cut to Algerian countryside, burnt by the sun, a boxy off-road 4WD travelling on a two-lane blacktop, two men in car, one asleep and other watching the road and his companion, pensively. Here, we now see the two main characters: Lotfi, driving (Benouari) and S., asleep (Salem). They are driving to find Abou Leila....

What follows, however, can only be described as a road trip that includes magnificent vistas of deserts and mountains; sporadic and puzzling narrative ellipses; implicit allusions to the gunfight at the start; seemingly incongruous moments of unaccountable, gruesome blood and gore and blood-soaked severed limbs; a large and often confusing cast of other characters; a hugely puzzling story; but, as with all good narratives, a denouement that brings us back to the beginning.

What's actually going on? Well, it seems to me that the underlying premise of this story has been used a few times in movie history, most notably in one of those from David Lynch - though with more style from Lynch than this offering has. But ... despite the very slow pacing as we traverse stark interminable deserts, by car and on foot, viewers who have seen some or all of Lynch's movies might enjoy this effort.

The setting and photography are more than adequate to convey the heat, loneliness, desolation and dangers of desert existence. In perhaps an unfair comparison, though, it's not up to the standard in David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962). On the other hand, it is a well produced, directed and acted story.

Recommended for adults only. Give it six out of ten.